Last week at a North Carolina commemoration of MLK's birthday, his daughter Bernice King struck out at hip-hop, stating it glorifies violence and degredates women. She joins an ever-growing chorus of high profile black figures pointing their fingers at rap's “sex, drugs & money” culture. Of course we know that not all hip-hop is the same, and spare us the comments of “what's real or not.” Are hip-hop and rap different? Is one good and one bad? That's a topic for another time (or essay – check out the excellent book Hip-Hop and Philsophy). What I would like to know is this: who holds the Authority?
There is an ongoing struggle right now in the world of hip-hop, and it is this: what is Moral Authority, what is its place in rap, and who validly holds that Authority? Don't believe me? How many conferences and summits have been held in the last year on hip-hop and “what's real?” (I don't have a figure, but a LOT). Two of the highest-profile releases last year were Jay-Z and Nas, both of which were essentially a treatise on the state of hip-hop, good or bad, and both have spoken publicly about the negative influence of their own work. Bill Cosby's famous “pound cake” speech, in which he condemned hip-hop (and really the lower-class black community in general) and spurred not only endless cable news interviews, but an entire book by black culturalist Michael Eric Dyson (”Is Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?”). What King, Cosby, Jay-Z, and Nas all share is a kind of immediate rejection of authority by their target audience – ghetto up-and-comers. We've seen these figures get shuffled into what Dyson calls the “Afristocrasy” – wealthy, out-of-touch elitists who wag their finger without real solutions. Some of this is merited – Jay-Z's contention on “Kingdom Come”
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